


Wire and Milk

by Gunderpants



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 16:50:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2589020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunderpants/pseuds/Gunderpants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alice Longbottom liked to smooth turmoil out with the bristles of a hairbrush</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wire and Milk

**Author's Note:**

> Written for hp_lovebirds in 2006. People seemed to like this one, but it isn't really my preferred taste in style.

One stroke. Two strokes. Ten got the knots out. Fifty kept the knots out. A hundred kept it shiny all day. A thousand ripped them out by the roots. A million left her wispy-haired and almost bald. She'd never pull her hair out by the roots. No, not on purpose. It'd never grow back: that's what her mother told her when she was afraid as a little girl and she pulled out all the eyelashes from her left eye. Only when she was scared. Or stressed. Or tense. Or angry. Or upset. A million beautiful strands of dark brown hair could halve in number in a day with a million strokes of the brush. 

She had the most beautiful hair and skin of all the girls in Hogwarts: her legs might have been short, and her face too round, and her hands podgy, but she would always feel pretty when she twirled a lock of hair around her fingers and felt the silky strands rush against her skin. Sometimes the sun lit her hair on fire and flecks of red and gold glinted in the dark brown. Sometimes, she'd flick her hair over the sensitive skin of her lips and lose track of the time. Sometimes, she'd only see her hair and porcelain skin of her hands and forget that she loathed the rest of the body she was in, and she almost felt pretty. 

And then she'd wake up of a morning to Lily Evans in the bed across from her: lovely lips open slightly for the shallow breaths of the end of sleep, and red hair tangling over milky skin, and she could only imagine the curve of her waist and the slender legs beneath the blanket before she felt so uncomfortable in her own skin. 

She wasn't meant to brush her hair so much: she didn't need to. But she wasn't meant to look at Lily's lips and curves and hair, and where her clavicles pressed against her skin and formed that dip at the base of her neck. Half imagining her own body like that, and the other half imagining her hands skimming over her hips and waist and finding those two little hollows of her pelvis at the bottom of her back. Good girls didn't think of other girls like that, and Alice was a good girl. 

Some nights, before bed, she'd ask Lily to brush her hair for her, and she'd relish the few minutes where she'd feel Lily's fingers scraping her neck and back and toying with her hair. Lily's fingers were tougher than hers, and sometimes the hardened skin of her fingertips would rub against her scalp. Lily was tough, unlike her: she had muscle on her slender frame, and her hair was a little coarse, and when Lily brushed her hair on the hundredth stroke she would offer to do Lily's hair for her. 

_My sister used to do this for me,_ said Lily quietly one night, as Alice brushed her hair for her. _When I was little and couldn't do it myself_. She was so still and quiet for such an effervescent girl after she said this, and Alice eventually dropped the brush after the thirtieth stroke, the bristles still tangling in Lily's hair. 

She was a warrior, all iron and wire under the creamy white of her skin and the delicate swell of her breasts. Alice looked at her tensed jaw and determined eyes sometimes and felt scared of the girl in the bed beside her - unafraid to leap into battle in the blink of an eye, and not caring to tie her hair into Boadicea's buns but to let it flail behind her like a flame. 

***

She looked so tired that first night back: climbing the stairs wearily, and not in the two-at-a-time bounds she was so used to taking. Alice saw her fingers shaking as she unpinned the badge, and when she let her robes slip to the ground Alice saw her fine bones more prominent along her ribs and spine. Her hair looked thin and brittle, and there was a frailty underpinning her movements as she sank onto Alice's bed. 

"You've had your hair cut?" 

She shook her head. "Can you brush it for me?" 

It was the first time she'd ever been the one to ask: Alice felt her breath catch in her throat, and she nodded as she summoned the flat-paddle brush into her hand. Lily settled herself back in Alice's lap, sitting quite still, but one accidental slip of a finger on her back picked up the faintest trembling, like aftershocks in the earth. 

"Are you--" 

"Please." 

Alice gingerly pulled the brush through Lily's hair, and immediately noted how easily it went through: though it was very limp and much thinner than normal, it seemed to just slip through the brush. Some of the fine musculature of Lily's back had seemed to waste, and her vertebra spelled a single braille sentence down her spine. The fine little hairs stood on end as Alice brushed, and she'd see Lily shudder whenever the bristles scraped against her scalp. Then she didn't stop shuddering. 

"Lily--" 

She saw Lily tremble and curl her legs into a ball. Alice wondered if she was choking or laughing for a minute until her gut tied itself into a knot and she fumbled clumsily for Lily's hand. "Oh, no--" She let her other arm wrap around Lily as she rocked her back and forth, feeling the sobs rack her body, and she whispered hushes into her ear. 

It took Lily a while to subside. She sat quietly, trying to slow her breathing and calm herself down, as Alice stroked her hair away from her face and squeezed her hand. Finally, the words came out: "my sister's getting married. She doesn't want me there." 

"Oh." 

"She kept pretending I wasn't home all holidays. I'd knock on her door but she'd never open it." Her voice was strong again, but quieter than normal and without the confidence that normally boosted it. "Then I asked her why she didn't want to see me and she wouldn't say, and... I can't help it." 

Alice didn't know what to say or do, so she resorted to just squeezing Lily's hand again. When she looked at her again, her breasts didn't seem as full, and her curves seemed to disappear into her frame, and she looked like a little girl. For the first time, Alice felt brave and lovely in her skin, but so sick and sad for her friend, and after so many years of wanting to crush her lips against Lily's skin she did so: not against her pretty lips or graceful neck, but on her temple, where a stray strand of red clung to her mouth, and almost instinctively her hand went to Lily's hair, where it twirled figure-eight patterns into her fingers. 

***

A million strokes. A hundred million. The hand kept rising and falling, a strand of wiry white falling out each time. She did it so often that the healers took the brush off her when they saw blood on her scalp. Still she rose her hand and let it drop, the hair no longer feeling silky beneath her fingers. 

There was a little boy and he had lovely thick hair and a round face, and the softest velvet skin, and she brushed his hair for him every day.


End file.
